


it takes one to know one, kid

by scenedenial



Category: Tiny Meat Gang (Band)
Genre: Babies, Fluff, M/M, literal daddies, meet cute, single dads
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26965903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scenedenial/pseuds/scenedenial
Summary: It’s a familiar scene; walls painted pastel blue and lined with multi-colored posters depicting the alphabet in the shapes of zoo animals, pretty young moms leaning over their Baby-Gapped brood, soft block toys being gummed in drooly mouths, Miss Kelsey cocking her brow and sayingCody, you made it.
Relationships: Cody Ko/Noel Miller, past Noel Miller/Aleena
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	it takes one to know one, kid

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in my drafts forever .... single father noel x cody
> 
> work of fiction don't send it to them etc.

Cody’s going to be late. _Again._ And then Miss Kelsey (who is perfect, and who hates him) will give him that scathing raised-eyebrow stare as the moms shuffle to widen the circle on the rainbow-striped carpet so Cody can sit down with the diaper bag knocking all over the place. 

Ava wails, stiffens her fat little arms and balls her fists so that there’s no way in hell Cody will be able to wrestle her into the tiny red jacket his mom bought. Ava screws up her red face and kicks Cody in the kidney. Fuck. _Okay._ No jacket. 

“Alright,” Cody says to her as he turns into the parking lot of the Mommy and Me group building, “this’ll only take an hour. It’s cool, right?” 

Ava stares up at him, belligerent, as he undoes the clasps on her carseat. 

—

It’s a familiar scene; walls painted pastel blue and lined with multi-colored posters depicting the alphabet in the shapes of zoo animals, pretty young moms leaning over their Baby-Gapped brood, soft block toys being gummed in drooly mouths, Miss Kelsey cocking her brow and saying _Cody, you made it._ He nods, musters a smile for her. 

The mom Cody always sits next to, in his unassigned-assigned place in the circle, grabs his face in her hands as he deposits Ava onto the carpeted ground to go scorn somebody else. She swipes a thumb underneath his left eye.

“You’re not sleeping.” She states, half-accusatory. “Did you try the tea I recommended last week?” 

_No, Shari,_ Cody wants to snap, _I actually didn’t get a chance to pop over to Whole fucking Foods and spend twelve fucking dollars on tea while my daughter is teething._ Instead, he shakes his head and shrugs and mumbles some excuse about work ramping up lately. He drinks apple juice out of a styrofoam cup and wishes it had alcohol in it. 

Ava throws a block. Someone else’s kid starts wailing. 

Cody scoops her up, pretends not to notice the moms looking at him like he brought a bong to playgroup. _Jesus, Ava,_ he tries to communicate to her telepathically as she squirms in his arms, _chill, man._

The door opens. 

It’s a guy carrying a sleeping kid in a purple Baby Bjorn. And Cody is so shocked by the presence of another pair of balls in the room that he nearly chokes on his juice. 

“Hi there!” Miss Kelsey says in her cheery voice that she doesn’t use with Cody. “Welcome! Come sit down and introduce yourself.” 

The guy, looking exhausted and un-showered and wary, takes an open space across the circle from Cody. 

“Hey, I’m, uh,” his voice rasps in a way Cody didn’t think to expect; he busies himself with separating Ava’s new teeth from his hand, “Noel. And this is Nicky.” 

“Hi Noel,” the group choruses. Cody meets his eye and gives him the wide-eyed _yeah_ glance of solidarity that he hopes will identify him as an ally. The corners of Noel’s mouth twitch up. 

Okay, fine. He’s cute. Cody isn’t blind. He’s _cute_ , in the unshaven, thrown-together way that Cody tries to use to his advantage on Tinder. He thinks it’s working better for Noel, though. 

Ava squawks in Cody’s lap and Noel meets his eyes again. Smiles for real this time. 

—

Cody catches Noel bundling Nicky into his carseat outside of the building afterwards. 

“Hey,” he says, shifting Ava from one hip to the other, “I wanted to introduce myself. Cody.” They shake.

“Are we the only dads who come to that thing, man?” Up close, Noel’s eyes are light and mesmerizing.

“Oh yeah.” Cody snorts. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you here.”

“Nicky’s mom is always getting on me about how I don’t do anything _social_ with him. And then when I finally bite the bullet, little man sleeps through the whole thing.” 

Fuck. He’s married. _Obviously_ he’s married. To a woman. Cody is a sexist asshole, to assume that the dads only do this shit if the mom isn’t in the picture. 

Like how Ava’s mom isn’t in the picture. 

“Besides,” Noel is saying, “I only have half the week with him, and I’m not tryna waste it in these wack-ass playgroups.”

 _Okay._ Regrouping. Not married? Not married. 

“How old is he?” Cody asks. 

“Like ten months.” Noel clips the last clasp on the carseat and straightens up. “Yours?” 

“Oh,” Cody mutters, remembering his daughter, “this is Ava. She’s almost a year.” 

Ava babbles on cue and Noel smiles at her. _Fuck,_ that’s a nice smile. 

“Well, I should go feed this guy.” Noel says, clapping Cody on the shoulder. 

“Will you be here next week?” Cody asks, sounding slightly too desperate for his own tastes.

“Good question, man.” Noel’s eyes scrunch when he smiles. “Will you be?”

Cody sighs, shrugs. “Yeah, probably.” 

“Then maybe.” 

_Then maybe_ Cody thinks as he gets Ava situated in the backseat. Then maybe. 

—

Ava naps after her bottle, her tiny pink hands screwed up next to her face. Cody stands over her crib and watches her for several long moments, watches the rise and fall of her little chest. 

He remembers the first weeks he had her here. The way he barely slept, watching her breathe obsessively, the facts and figures of SIDS playing in his head on a loop. He couldn’t put her down. She wasn’t safe in the car seat, wasn’t safe in the crib, wasn’t safe in her grandma’s arms, wasn’t safe anywhere but held against Cody’s chest in the stained blue armchair that he stayed up in night after night after night. 

She’s almost one. And she’s fine. 

Cody lays down. 

—

Cody has just resigned himself to the fact that Noel isn’t coming back when he walks through the door. Nicky is awake this time, babbling, still strapped into the purple Bjorn. The way he clutches one of Noel’s fingers in his whole tiny fist isn’t lost on Cody. 

“Hey, man.” Cody is relieved, unaccountably so. Noel is wearing a snapback and a black hoodie and he looks like something Cody would pick up in a bar on the strip if they weren’t, well, here. 

“Hi,” Noel daps Cody up and it feels good, feels cool, feels the way he mostly hasn’t felt for the past twelve months, “sup?” 

They sit. Noel’s knee brushes Cody’s thigh as he maneuvers Nicky out of the sling. Cody holds his breath and drinks his juice, Ava kicking in his lap.

“So,” Cody asks, once the hour is up and the moms are filtering out and Miss Kelsey is gathering blocks back into their respective totes, “do you wanna, like, grab coffee? My treat.” 

Noel looks at him like he’s going to say no. And Cody curses himself in his head. _He’s busy. He’s straight. He doesn’t drink coffee. He has enough friends._

“Yeah, sure thing.” Noel smiles, wrestling on Nicky’s tiny air forces. “Where to?” 

—

They end up at an overpriced place in Venice with white walls and giant bay windows. Noel orders a latte and a cup of hot water to warm Nicky’s bottle in and Cody feels a flush of embarrassment that Ava’s been drinking her bottles cold for months now. 

“Hey, man, thanks for this. Feels like it’s been forever since I hung out with someone my own age.” Noel’s fingers look long and strong and golden wrapped around his mug. Cody distracts himself by readjusting Ava’s teether. 

“Yeah, I felt that. Can’t remember the last time I went out without her, either.” 

“You should find a babysitter.” Noel gives him a steady, half-humorous look. “Take a night.” 

Fuck. Cody’s pretty sure he’s blushing. And he burnt his tongue on his flat white. 

“Probably. I just—”

“Don’t feel like you can leave her?” Noel fills in, and Cody’s grateful. He nods. “Yeah, same. Even when Nicky’s with my ex, I’m all,” _(ex)_ “jittery.” 

“It’s weird, man.” Cody supplies lamely. 

“Very.” Cody is looking at Noel probably too closely, trying to figure out how old he is and what he does and what the story with this _ex_ is without actually asking about any of it. 

“So,” Noel sips his coffee like a normal adult human being, ‘what do you do?” Yeah, okay. So there is a way to ask that question. 

“I’m a software engineer.” Cody must be grimacing because Noel chuckles. 

“No way. Same.” 

“Shit!” Cody says, forgetting Nicky (Ava’s heard it all a million times). Noel notes his expression and laughs.

“No worries, man, I don’t exactly keep it G rated.” Shit, he has a nice smile. “And that’s crazy. You work from home?”

Cody nods. He left his desk job at Fullscreen right before Ava was born and hasn’t gone back. He means to. He will. One of these days. 

“Me too.” Noel hefts Nicky up to his shoulder, burps him. “I don’t wanna pry, man, but is Ava’s mom around?” 

Cody likes that he asks _the_ question. No one ever asks. 

“Nah.” Cody’s tongue stings from where he burnt it. “We broke up around the time she got pregnant and she decided she didn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Gotcha. Nicky’s mom and I just separated but it was a while coming. Guess part of me thought that having a kid might fix it.” Noel shrugs self-consciously. Cody fights the urge to reach across the table for his hand. 

“How often do you have him?” Cody asks, thinking Noel probably isn’t looking for pity. 

“Thursday through Saturday, and most Sundays.” 

“Maybe I can find a babysitter and we can get a drink sometime.” Cody says. _God._ He’s always too fucking forward. 

Ava drops her teether to the tiled floor and bursts into tears. Cody hefts her into his lap, uses the hem of his t-shirt to wipe the snot from her face; when he looks back up, Noel is smiling at him.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Want my number?”

—

Cody stirs fettuccine in a dented pot of boiling water on the stove as Ava babbles in her pack-n-play. 

“Do I text him, man? It’s too soon, right?” 

Ava yells and throws her board book onto the kitchen floor. 

“You’re right.” 

Cody stirs canned red sauce into the pasta and adds a healthy pinch of salt. Fuck, he can’t have Noel over like this. What’ll he _cook_ for him? _Here’s leftover white cheddar Annie’s and watered down apple juice._ Yeah. Not a panty dropper. Cody doesn’t even remember the last time his fridge had a six pack in it. 

He’s getting ahead of himself.

Cody eats and gives Ava a bath in the sink and reads _Goodnight Moon_ for the millionth time while she has her last bottle of the day. Her tiny, fuzzy head smells powdery and soft. Cody was bald until he was almost two. 

She falls asleep on him in the armchair and he doesn’t move until his arm is numb and the sun has gone down. His kid. His girl. Jesus. 

“I love you.” He whispers to her once she’s settled in her crib with the blue flowers on the mattress cover. Ava coos in her sleep.

Okay. Work time.

Fuck, Cody’s tired. He’s always fucking tired. His back aches from sitting at his computer, staring at limes of code until his eyes swim. But he’ll have to put Ava in daycare eventually, and then school, and then there’s a car when she’s sixteen and prom dresses and college and her wedding and—

Cody groans, snaps his laptop shut. Buries his face in his hands. It’s after midnight. 

His phone buzzes. 

Cody’s flustered before he even picks up because Noel calls instead of texting, apparently, and Noel’s calling _him_ , and Noel’s calling him in the middle of the night on a Saturday.

“Hi,” Cody is saying and his voice sounds weird in his own ears and god, he wants a beer. 

“Hey, man. Sorry, it’s late.” 

“No problem. What’s up?” 

“Listen, I know the playgroup thing happens tomorrow but my ex is gonna be with Nicky and, like, she offered to watch Ava for a few hours if you wanted to... hang out. Somewhere where we aren’t surrounded by kids.” 

Noel sounds _nervous_ , or something, and somehow that jolts Cody back into himself. His cheeks are hot. _Hang out._ Fuck, it’s like high school. 

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great.” 

“Cool. Sweet.” Cody doesn’t even know if Noel is straight. He wants to punch himself in the face. 

“The thing is, I’ve never really... left Ava with anyone else?” 

“Do you wanna come meet her first? She’s a really great mom, I promise. She uses, like, vinegar to clean the house. Nothing toxic, that’s her thing.”

Cody wants to laugh, from nerves and relief and from the way Noel’s voice sounds. 

“Okay, man. She sounds great.” 

Noel lets out a breath and Cody wants to kiss him on the mouth. 

“I can give you her address if you wanna meet us there tomorrow?” 

“Great.” _Man, stop saying great._ “Ava will love that.” _Shut up._

“See ya, then.”

“Bye, Noel.”

Jesus. Okay.

Cody goes back to the bedroom and lays out a sweater and his nicest pair of jeans on the blue armchair. 

—

He wakes up early the next morning, despite how late work and stress that feels too similar to first-date anxiety ( _this isn’t a date, jackass_ ) kept him up. Ava is still asleep, somehow, so Cody takes a piss and makes coffee and stands around in the messy kitchen to drink it. He’s heading to Aleena’s—Noel’s ex’s—place at noon. Four hours. 

He hopes Ava won’t throw a fit. He hopes he won’t spill food on himself. He hopes Noel isn’t just trying to be friendly. He hopes that’s all this is. 

He hears Ava wake up and babble in the bedroom and hauls her out of the crib to change her diaper and give her applesauce that ends up more on the high chair than in her mouth. They sit on the couch and watch Princess Sofia while Cody absentmindedly scrolls twitter. Three hours. 

Cody does the dishes and looks over emails and retypes a sequence and calls his mom to update her on Ava’s walking and sleeping habits. Two hours. 

He puts Ava down in her crib again, hoping she’ll nap before her playdate, and showers fast with the door open. He shaves in the mirror and combs product through his hair and tries to smear the dark circles from underneath his eyes. Ugh. One hour. 

_Not a date._

He dresses Ava in a hoodie and leggings and slip-on shoes and packs everything he can think of into the diaper bag; bottles on ice and applesauce pouches and goldfish and a change of clothes and baby aspirin and her favorite stuffed toy. He tells her to be nice to Nicky. She laughs. Jesus. 

Aleena lives closer than Cody expected; her house is nice, modestly sized, painted navy with a springy yellow door. The garden beds look taken care of. He wonders, with a start, whether Noel has other kids. 

Cody lifts Ava onto one hip and the diaper bag onto the other and rings the doorbell, his heart in his throat. 

Noel opens the door and he’s wearing nice jeans too and Cody could puke. He doesn’t. 

“Hi!” Aleena is saying, popping up next to Noel with Nicky in her arms, and Cody trusts her right away. “This is Ava, right? Hi, Ava!” Ava smiles and gums at her hand; Cody takes it as a good sign. 

“Hey, thank you for doing this,” Cody says to her. She’s short and pretty with long, dark hair and she and Noel look like a couple that could be in, whatever, Home and Garden Magazine. 

“No problem.” She smiles and gestures for him to set down the diaper bag. “I’ve been meaning to set up more playdates for Nicky, so this is perfect.” 

“Don’t worry about it, man.” Noel says, and his eyes are warm. “I mean, look, Nicky’s still kicking.” 

_”Dude.”_ Aleena reprimands, swatting Noel in the arm. They all laugh. It feels good. 

“Let’s get outta here?” Noel asks.

“Okay.” Cody sets Ava down on the cheery, clean floor. Okay. 

—

Noel takes him to a dive bar. They order greasy mountains of fries and onion rings and wings that remind Cody of college but in a good way and a pitcher of beer to split even as Cody tries to calculate the last time he had more than one Coors Lite. 

“Come here often?” Cody asks, kicking himself after the fact for the accidental pick up line usage. 

“Nah.” Noel smiles. He’s wearing a beanie. His eyes are so warm that Cody’s almost able to push his anxiety over leaving Ava out of his mind. “But I figured it’s kinda the opposite of the places we’re always hanging out.”

“Change of pace.” Cody agrees, trying to clear his head of the slideshow of Noel pushing Nicky in a cart at Whole Foods or on his knees in a sandbox. Fuck. Cute. 

(And Noel would look cute on his knees too but that’s a completely inappropriate image to equate with a man he met at Mommy and Me playgroup and besides Cody hasn’t been laid since before Ava was born so, like, forever ago.)

Noel is looking at Cody like he’s waiting for a response. 

“Sorry, what?”

“Hey, are you Canadian?” Noel grins, swipes a fry through gooey orange nacho cheese. “ _Sourry._ ”

“Yeah.” Cody laughs. “Lived there until college.” 

“I am too.” Noel says. “Toronto. Only I moved out here young enough that I don’t have the accent.” 

“Damn. That’s crazy.” Cody takes a drink; the beer is warm in his stomach. He wants to ask Noel if he’s seeing anybody. He won’t. 

They talk about their kids. Of course. It’s easy. Noel has an infectious laugh that his eyes crinkle up during and Cody is happy on fries and cheese and beer and when Noel checks his phone and says _shit, we should get back_ it tastes like disappointment. Damn. 

When Cody has collected Ava and her things up and is standing on Aleena’s porch saying thank you, Noel claps him on the shoulder. His hand is strong and warm. 

“Let’s do this again soon, man.” 

Cody can’t be sure, but he thinks he’s blushing as he straps Ava in.

—

“Dude,” Devon says, voice crackling over the phone, “this is the first person you’ve shown any interest in for a _year_. That’s a big fucking deal.”

“Devon—” Cody tries to cut off the tangent before it begins.

“We gotta have a party.” Devon continues. “A Cody-loses-his-virginity party.”

“Wh—” Cody shakes Ava’s bottle, “I have a kid.”

“Virginity resets after six months.” Devon says, as if he’s reciting a fact he read off Wikipedia.

“You’re a dumbass.” 

“So,” Devon ignores him, “what’s your next move?” 

“No fucking clue.” Cody hoists Ava into her high chair. “I was hoping you could tell me.” 

“Invite him over for a playdate.”

“What—”

“You know what I mean. Him and his kid. Put them in front of the TV then go get your brains fucked out in the bedroom.” 

Cody sighs, closes his eyes.

“Yeah, maybe I will see if he wants to bring Nicky over. That’s not sus, right? Doesn’t sound like I’m trying anything?” 

“No, Cody, that’s extremely normal. Almost as normal as falling in love with the only other dad at Pilates.” 

“Fuck off, man.”

“I love you!”

“Love you too.” Cody replies. He hangs up, tosses his phone down onto the couch. Picks it up again almost immediately and texts Noel.

 _Wanna hang here with the kids this afternoon?_ Cody’s stomach twists with nerves as he presses send. _Ugh._

Noel responds fast. _Yeah :) how’s 4?_

Cody sinks down into the couch, looks over at Ava. Mouths _shit_. 

—

Cody does his best to make the apartment look, well, like someone other than a twenty-something single dad lives there. He loads the dishwasher, corrals Ava’s toys into a bin, makes his bed just, you know, in case. 

Ava babbles and grabs at Cody’s hair in her warm, tiny fist when he lifts her up to eye level. Sometimes Cody looks at her and can’t even breathe. Can’t even believe that he made something this small and alive and _good_. 

“I like him.” Cody says to her, wiping snot from beneath her nose. “Is that stupid?”

Ava stares at him with wide, round eyes. Laughs in his face. Cody kisses the top of her fuzzy head. 

(Cody wasn’t in the room when she was born. He saw her for the first time through the glass of the nursery, sleeping with her hands balled up and her pink-and-blue striped hat slipping off her head. His last name written on the label stuck to the side of the bassinet. 

He talked to her mother for the last time that day. _You’ll be a good dad. I’d be an awful mom. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to mess her up. Please_

Cody left the hospital with Ava bawling in the freshly unboxed car seat. Sat in the backseat next to her and put his face in his hands and cried until his head roared. Drove back to his apartment where the crib was still only half built and the shelves were packed with formula. Didn’t sleep for four days straight.

He would do it all again. He would do anything.)

__

Noel is wearing a black beanie and a green hoodie. Nicky squirms in his arms, one shoe off and one on. Noel apologizes indistinctly, for the way that there’s spit-up on his right shoulder, for the way Nicky is squalling. Cody sees the bags under Noel’s eyes. He gets it. His heart aches. 

“Man, I haven’t done laundry in, like, two months.” Cody says, ushering Noel in. He sees Noel’s shoulders relax, just slightly. “You’re good. Want a beer?” 

“Yes. Please.” 

“Rough day?” The cold bottles feel good on Cody’s sweating palms.

“Oh yeah.” Noel says, depositing Nicky on the living room carpet. “I think he’s teething.” 

“Ava didn’t sleep for, like, six weeks when she got her first one. Fucking miserable.”

“Damn, that’s reassuring.” Noel takes a swig of beer; Cody tries not to watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs.

“Sorry.” Cody’s hyper-aware of how he’s standing. “Listen, you can drop him here sometime if you need a break.”

“Yeah?” Noel smiles with his teeth. Cody’s chest feels tight. “Thank you, man. Really.” 

They sit on the floor with Ava and Nicky, absentmindedly stacking blocks as they talk about preschool and pacifiers and pediatricians. Cody gives Noel the name of the formula he buys and wonders how he can slip _I want you to spit in my mouth_ into this conversation. 

Ava falls asleep on Cody’s lap, drooling onto the leg of his Old Navy jeans. 

“I was actually thinking about putting Nicky down for a minute too.” Noel says, and that’s how they end up sitting on Cody’s bed with both of their babies asleep in Ava’s yellow crib. 

Cody’s sure his heartbeat must be audible. 

“What were you like in high school?” Noel asks.

“I used to dive competitively. And DJ.” Noel laughs, his eyes creasing closed, and it feels so good. 

“I was, like, 4’11. And I got in fights.”

“Did you win any?”

“Fuck no.” Noel’s thigh is inches away from Cody. He smells like shampoo. They laugh again.

“I think I would’ve liked you in high school.” Cody says and he doesn’t even mean it like _that_ but when he realizes how it sounds his face burns. 

“Yeah?” Noel’s eyebrow cocks up. Cody could die. He nods. “I think you might be giving me too much credit.” 

“How’d you meet Aleena?” Cody needs to change the subject before he asphyxiates on his own spit.

“Mutual friends. We got too serious too quick. But she’s great.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Isn’t it weird,” Noel says, gesturing towards the crib, “that they just appear in your life one day and then you become a completely different person?”

“I’d kill a person for her.” Cody responds. 

“Exactly.” 

“Do you want more?” Cody asks.

“Yeah. Someday.”

“Me too.” 

The sun is going down outside. Cody can hear Noel’s breathing.

“Can I ask you something?” Noel says. 

“Shoot.” Cody’s throat is thick.

“Have you ever been with a guy?” 

Jesus. Jesus fuck. Okay.

“Yeah.” Cody says, forcing neutrality into his voice. “Have you?” 

“No.” Cody’s heart plummets into his feet. “But I would.” 

Oh. _Oh._

“Cody,” Noel is saying, “I don’t wanna, like, make assumptions, but—”

Cody doesn’t think. He just does it. 

Noel tastes like beer and wintergreen gum. Noel’s mouth is on Cody’s mouth. Their children are sleeping six feet away. They’re doing this.

They break apart. Cody, bold and drunk on the feeling of Noel’s lips, of their knees pressing together, says _I’ve wanted to do that ever since I met you._

Noel looks at him. Laughs. Says _me too._

**Author's Note:**

> y'all want a part two??


End file.
